.....not for you


I follow The Alchemist to the forest, down through a small pathway that had overgrown with more bushier plant life and vines, forcing me to move them aside as I travel through it.
It wouldn't have been so horrible of everything was dry, but it was all soaking wet and dripping with the last rain that was probably ten minutes ago. Not that time was a thing here.
   Now I was wet, a bit chilled, and about to learn something profound.

I had asked The Alchemist why I couldn't hold the higher energy or signals, that it felt like a rubber band pulling me back, snapping me back.
He didn't want whatever he was to say in the book I'm writing... so I'm here, now following him through the trees, off quite a distance from the cabin now.

"Close your eyes." He tells me as I still follow him.
I do so... trusting him to lead me through the overgrowth without getting drenched even more. Slowly we make our way further and further. I hear water, moving water.
"Here." He whispers, bringing me beside him.
   I open my eyes. There's towering rock cliffs rising high upwards where a waterfall in the distance drops and creates more smaller waterfalls as it flows downward toward where we are at the bottom of the ravine.
This is the cathedral... I realize, feeling the energy of this place fill into me, through me, with me.
"This is you." The Alchemist says. "All of this is you. The parts yet to be discovered. Inside, outside. Everything is you. All of it."
   I'm silent. I understand.
"So...I will then ask you. Why couldn't you hold the higher energies, the higher signals?" He asks what I asked him.
   I lower my eyes, crying in silence, holding it back. Smothering it under a million blankets, smothering my worth under a million blankets.
"The emotions aren't safe." I say. "Who can see this but us? Who can feel this but us? Who knows the truth, and even if they did, will it be held as sacred?"
"All of this is you. The who is you." He says again.
   I squeeze his hand.
"The world is me? Others are me?" I question, thinking it didn't quite fit right.
"There are no others." He shakes his head. "Go back to the emotions. The energy." He kneels down, now that I'm back to being a child again.

It takes me long minutes.
"They are the rubber band. The blankets." I say softly.
"Who." He asks.
"My own thoughts and perceptions of others." I tell him. "I brought them here." I shake my head. "How do I get them out?"
"They aren't here. You...are there." He confirms. "Come home. All of you. All of your presence moving through this space. With the overflow moving to them." He says assured. "The overflow."
"Fill myself up first. Is this what it means?" I look at him, thinking I knew this, but not at this level of awareness. This level of depth and of height.
"Yes." He smiles, taking my arms gently, almost to the point of tears. "Yes."

"Teach me how."

"Ooohh." He hisses a bit. "Not me. Seiphra."

   I might have froze. I liked Seiphra. I did... but he was a samurai. I was gonna get beat with a stick until I learned, wasn't I?
The Alchemist grabs my jacket and pulls me forward to touch his forehead to mine briefly.
"Seiphra is a friend. His training...his teaching...is guaranteed." He whispers. "Trust him."
"It's okay." I smirk. "I understand." I say, knowing full well that I would give Mustang more trouble than I would ever give Seiphra.
"I won't go anywhere. I'll be with you. Making faces as he swats you across the shin each time you get out of line." He teases.
"Yay." I do mini jazz hands.

"I accept." I say, agreeing to this nonsense. "I accept." I breathe in. "I accept." Cause the third time is the real acceptance.